“This is all that we do,” said Samara Anderson, marketing director for North Star. “We specialize in helping communities market themselves.”
The decision to hire North Star came from the Redevelopment Agency on Tuesday and was the unexpected product of an effort to create a “Buy Glendale” promotional campaign for struggling local businesses during the recession.
The campaign was meant to be a quick response to sharp drops in consumer spending at local businesses, which officials had hoped to stimulate by educating residents about the importance of frequenting their neighborhood stores.
But the City Council, acting as the agency, slowly realized the complexity of its request to promote each of the city’s varied business districts and communities in one cohesive marketing campaign aimed at residents in Glendale and around Southern California.
City staff changed course and sought out marketing firms after months of experimenting with its own TV commercials and advertising materials that fell flat with the City Council.
“As we began to look at it, we began to realize that this is a far more complicated and involved issue than we initially thought,” said Councilman John Drayman, who serves as chairman of the Redevelopment Agency.
The move to develop a marketing strategy moved the agency into uncharted territory that inspired discussion about long-term cultivation of an identity that the city had not paid much attention to in the past, Drayman said.
Glendale’s reputation as “the bedroom community between Pasadena and Burbank” developed in past years as its neighbors grew in stature with the popularity of media giants and the Tournament of Roses Parade, he said.
